Chaos Theory
by 12cubed
Summary: Peter doesn't have to dream the future: he's lived it. A look at Peter after 3x02.


_"It never should have happened this way."_

* * *

Peter knows the value of a merciful death.

He used to believe it as an abstract principle. He thought that he could help to ease the inevitable, make it a thing of peace and beauty. Now it's just something he accepts, a basic truth of his world, and with every kill, all he aims for is to make it quick and easy.

But a part of him still believes that death can be a gift. He has to, because he's standing outside the room where Nathan is dying, his chest cut open and blood flooding into his lungs, and he has to stand back and watch it happen, has to fight back the hope that his brother will survive.

He came here to kill Nathan, but the only thing that's stopping him from bursting into that room and bringing him back to life is knowing that it could be so much worse.

* * *

_"Who do you think you inherited your first ability from? Your dreams. I dreamed you'd come, I saw what you'd do."_

* * *

Peter doesn't have to dream the future: he's lived it. Though at times, he wonders if maybe it wasn't all a dream after all. His first war, with people who were once friends and family looking back at him across enemy lines. His first kill, the hot sick smell of blood mingling with the smoke unfurling from the barrel of his gun.

He's spent so much time wondering where it all went wrong, how things might have been different. What would have happened if someone, somewhere along the way had chosen a different path. Now, they're about to find out.

* * *

_"We're all connected. Our hopes, our dreams, our children's futures, reflected back in each other's eyes. We fight our own personal battles, but we know we're not alone. Because only together can we make our short time on this planet mean something."_

* * *

Peter watches Nathan standing at the altar, framed by the soft light filtered through the stained-glass windows. He can smell the sweet warm scent of burning candles, and something stirs in his memory: sitting in church on Sunday mornings with a hymn book lying heavy on his lap, trying not to yawn, Nathan's hand on his shoulder reminding him not to fidget. Such a long time ago.

He sees something move out of the corner of his eye: it's the reporter, the hand holding his microphone dropping to his side, forgotten. He's no longer a journalist on the hunt for a good story. Now he's just another person in the audience, caught up in the vision of a world united, people brought together by a shared destiny.

Nathan's voice is hypnotic, mesmerizing--everyone sits quiet, spellbound, under his sway, breathing to the same rhythm, the same heartbeat. This is one of the reasons why their parents had such high hopes for him: he's good at this, really good.

Peter's seen just how good he can be. That's why he's here.

* * *

There was an uproar after Nathan's speech in Odessa. They became overnight sensations, the Flying Petrelli Brothers, on the cover of every newspaper and tabloid and the leading story on every news network, their phones ringing off the hook with offers from the BBC and CNN to make documentaries about their powers, as well as more dubious propositions from investors scenting the opportunity for a quick fortune. People like them started to appear everywhere: a kid from Kerala who could control the weather. A man in Madrid who could turn water into ice.

Nathan soon became a spokesperson for the "mutants." The name caught on quickly, partly because of the X-Men movies, partly because of _Activating Evolution_, which shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list after someone saw Peter holding his copy in the street. The government wanted a mediator between the people with abilities and the rest of the population, and as somebody with political experience and a relatively harmless power, Nathan was the perfect candidate.

At first, Peter was proud of him. They all were. Hiro called them in a fever of excitement after Nathan's first appearance at Capitol Hill: he'd adapted his nickname for Nathan to "Flying Professor X." They got used to seeing his face on TV: appealing to Congress to pass a new piece of legislation preventing discrimination against mutants, or leading a committee to create educational institutions adapted for children who had manifested early.

Of course, not everything went smoothly. The public was excited by their powers, but there were rumblings of disquiet, too: they were afraid of being attacked by people with super strength, afraid of thieves phasing into their homes at night. Nathan was quick to put forward measures for tracking and controlling dangerous mutants--keeping them under sedation if necessary, to prevent them from using their powers. He enlisted Mohinder to help collect and allocate funds for research on controlling and suppressing the abilities, just in case.

Nathan insisted that he was only protecting everyone from possible threats, that it was no different from locking up murderers and rapists. And Peter understood, or thought he did. Nathan was different from Adam and Linderman: after all, they'd called the press conference to take down the Company. But one month passed, then another, then another, with no sign from Nathan that he was preparing to investigate their parents' history, or that he even remembered why they'd told the world in the first place.

Then the rumors began to circulate: initially among online conspiracy groups that everyone dismissed as a bunch of geeks with too much time on their hands. But the stories didn't disappear--they kept coming back, whispered at bus stops as people waited in the rain, repeated by parents over dinner tables after the children had gone to bed.

Research facilities that were carrying out tests without the subjects' consent. Suspicious disappearances. Construction sites in Nevada with electric fences and high level security systems, and concrete facilities big enough to hold five thousand people. Peter didn't believe it at first. Surely Nathan would know if such things were happening: he'd put a stop to it.

Then one day, Peter turned on the TV to find that the world had turned upside down. A group of mutants had escaped from a holding cell in Texas and had gone on the rampage, taking hostages in a high school and locking down the entire neighborhood. The FBI had called in professional negotiators, but something went wrong: one of the mutants lost control of his abilities, and blew apart the entire building. Eighty seven students were already dead, and many more were in critical condition.

Peter called Mohinder before he set out to see Nathan, but there was no answer. When Peter went to his apartment, there was no sign of a struggle: everything was neat and in its place, notes sorted into color-coded files, books on biochemistry and genetics stacked on the desk. Even the mugs above the sink still hung from the same hooks: Molly's painted with pink and yellow flowers, Matt's adorned with the label, "World's Best Dad," and Mohinder's, patterned in green and blue. There was nothing to suggest that Mohinder hadn't simply gone on vacation.

Nothing, except for the fact that Molly couldn't find him.

Peter rushed into Nathan's office, expecting him to react with horror and surprise. Instead, he avoided Peter's gaze, staring out of the window, and told him that it wasn't under his jurisdiction, that the police could handle it, that he had more than enough to worry about right now without looking for Dr. Suresh.

At first, Peter tried to argue, tried to convince Nathan to do something, change something, before it was too late. He kept talking, hoping for a denial, a protest, reassurance that Nathan hadn't known, that he didn't have any part in this, that he would help to make it right. Then finally, Nathan spoke.

"It's for the greater good, Pete."

The government had never intended to collaborate with them--they couldn't risk that much power running loose without their control. The initial period of diplomacy had been a front, intended to buy time until the infrastructure was in place: the camps, the labs, the specially trained guards and police. After that, they'd just been waiting for an excuse to declare an enemy--and the breakout earlier that day had given them exactly what they wanted. It was all-out war, and Mohinder was the first casualty. Peter wasn't sure when Nathan had learned this, or how: he didn't want to know.

"As long as I'm here--you'll be safe. I promise you that."

He didn't have to say that: Peter knew his brother would never betray him. At least, not according to Nathan's definitions of betrayal. He heard the echo of the Nathan from two years back, asking him if he could regenerate no matter what happened, asking with a hunger in his voice that he hadn't recognized at the time. And it was this moment, more than anything, that made Peter realize that this wasn't a mistake or a misunderstanding--it was terrifyingly real.

Something had swayed Nathan in the right direction, that night at Kirby Plaza. Peter had been so grateful, so relieved, that he hadn't stopped to consider: he could just as easily have swung the other way.

* * *

_"I've seen what you do. What you become. So don't think I'm doing this for my health."_

* * *

Angela puts her hands on Peter's chest, pressing him up against the wall. He grasps her wrists, pushing her away, but he can't let go. So instead, he grips tighter, feeling the hard diamond edge of her bracelets cutting into his palms.

She isn't like Nathan, who took the wrong path, made the wrong choices. Peter knows now that this is where she wanted to be, where she was headed all along. He's learned a lot in the past few years: about the Company, about their parents, about the world they envisioned, and where he would once have been disbelieving, he now sees them for what they are, drunk on power and hungry for more.

He wonders why he never saw this in her--whether her disguise had been too good, or his own eyes too blind. This must have been how she looked to Nathan, when she talked to him before the election, when she showed him a face that she'd never shown to Peter, not until now.

But even knowing all this, Peter would still have tried to understand--would have tried to love her as his mother. But he's seen what she'll do to Nathan and Claire--what she's already done, in her future, and his past. And that's something he can never forgive.

* * *

In his world, Angela now headed the Company, her power carefully hidden. Bob Bishop had been careless enough to let her obtain evidence proving that he had an ability. After that, it was only a matter of time before he disappeared, too. Just another name on a list. Angela herself was safe: she'd made sure of that. Everyone who knew her secret had either been killed or was too afraid to speak--and she knew her sons would never give her away, no matter what she did.

He and Nathan and Matt had set out to destroy the Company: in the end, their actions ended up legitimizing it. The government soon saw the advantages in supporting an organization that had years of experience in trapping and containing mutants; Angela and Nathan were just as quick to recognize the possibilities that would open up once they had the U.S. Senate on their side. The Company no longer needed the fiction of Primatech Paper--its agents became government employees, wearing uniforms and carrying badges, stationed at highway checkpoints, schools, hospitals, on the lookout for research subjects or possible recruits.

They weren't heroes, not anymore: least of all Peter. As someone with a power classified as Grade 9 by the Mutant Classification Commission, he had to stay hidden, never staying in the same place for more than a week. Every once in a while he went to the Deveaux building and fed the pigeons on the roof, taking a moment to remember Claude. He was grateful for the protection of invisibility: but sometimes he wondered if he'd lost himself somewhere along the way, if he'd actually become transparent during all those weeks of pretending he didn't exist, pretending he was someone else.

Despite the stated aim of the Company as the "containment and registration of super-powered persons," they continued to enlist people with abilities. The line being drawn wasn't between mutants and non-mutants: it was between people who wanted to live their own lives, make their own choices, and those who were too tired or too scared to fight any longer. It didn't make sense: but nobody in their world worried about logic anymore. It was a luxury they couldn't afford.

It wasn't until Peter and Hiro tried to break into one of the camps that they realized just how much progress the Company had made in its research. The guards had tranquilizer darts filled with a cocktail of drugs that affected the central nervous system, paralyzing their powers; the doors and fences were wired to shoot electricity directly to the brain, knocking them unconscious so they could be sedated and kept in a cell. They escaped, but just barely: if Hiro hadn't been able to teleport them out in time, they'd have ended up as prisoners. Peter remembered the cup of pills that Elle had fed him every day for four months--that had only been the beginning.

He'd seen his mother one last time in that future. He wasn't trying to change her mind--he'd given up believing that was possible. All he wanted was an explanation. What he got was a dismissal.

"You wouldn't understand, Peter. There are difficult choices to be made, and both I and your brother have made them. This is no longer your concern."

He'd wanted to shout that Nathan had once made a choice, the hard choice, the right choice, so why was he making the wrong one now? In another world, a better world, Nathan wouldn't have betrayed them. Mohinder would be alive. And Claire wouldn't have to live her life in fear.

But Peter knew that his mother was the one who couldn't understand, who would never understand no matter what he said. So for the first time in his life he held back all the thoughts and anger swirling through his head, and walked out of the door.

* * *

_"What happened to you?"_

_"Something awful."_

* * *

It's when Peter sees Claire, really sees her, that he realizes just how badly he's screwed up. He knows, even before she tells him, that another piece of the schoolgirl he met in Odessa has disappeared forever. He'd wanted to save her from this, save her from becoming the Claire he'd just left in the future, but instead, he's pushed her further along that road.

He knows about the Butterfly Effect. When he first heard of it, he'd thought it was wonderful: an infinite number of possibilities branching out from one place in space and time, the final destination depending on the tiniest of variables: a gust of wind, a drop of rain, a right turn instead of a left, and your future could change forever.

But if that's so, if the smallest shift at your starting point can lead to two entirely different universes, he wonders why Claire always seems to end up in the same place, hardened and angry and most of all, alone: why she can't escape the inevitability of her fate.

She's so sure he can help, so sure that he would never fail her, and though he tries to keep within the truth, he knows that even his presence is a lie. Looking at the hope and faith in her eyes, for a split second, he's tempted--it would be so easy to pretend, to act the part she's asking him to play. But there's no going back.

He isn't the Peter she wants, but she's still the Claire he's trying to save. And the only way he can do that now, is by leaving.

* * *

Peter never thought he and Claire would be on the opposing sides of a war, but it happened anyway.

They experimented on her, used her, her blood and organs and cells, an endless supply of shiny new toys for the Company scientists to play with. He never learned all the details, but he didn't have to: Claire's wounds didn't leave any scars on her skin, but everything she'd endured was written in her face, her eyes. Her body never aged: but every time he saw her, she looked a little older.

He told her once that life would get better after high school--it never occurred to either of them that she might never graduate. Somehow, she ended up working for the Company: trading in her pom-poms for a gun, blonde hair for dark, her cheerleading uniform for regulation black. She did what she had to in order to survive. She said she learned that from her dad. Peter didn't know which father she meant. Once, he would have been sure, just from the sound of her voice, but not anymore.

"I've chosen my life, Peter. There's no point regretting it."

Claire stopped believing in a better world a long time ago. Peter never did. He just didn't know if that world could ever emerge from the one they knew.

* * *

_"You were in a different future where I came from. But I stopped that. Now you're on the path to being the brother that I always looked up to. You're going to make the right choices."_

* * *

Peter looks into Nathan's eyes one more time, asking for forgiveness and knowing he doesn't deserve it. He waits for Nathan's touch, the warm, familiar weight of his hands, the contact he's missed for so long. But it doesn't come.

Nathan wants to know what's going to happen in the future. But his future isn't Peter's--it doesn't exist yet. And that's the only hope Peter has left. This is still his Nathan, before it all went wrong, and that means there's still a chance for everything to turn out right.

* * *

Peter avoided Nathan after their last conversation: he couldn't even bring himself to watch the speeches or read the news reports anymore. After a while, there were no more messages on his answering machine, no more attempts from Nathan to keep in touch. So he hadn't been particularly worried when weeks, then months passed without hearing from his brother: after all, he was probably busier than ever.

Or so he believed, until he heard the announcement of a new government liaison for the mutants. That was when he knew: they'd taken Nathan, too.

He tried to find him, reaching out with his mind the way Molly had taught him, but came up against a blank--a nothingness, an empty space where his brother should be.

Peter knew they couldn't have taken him far: why bother, when nobody dared to walk past the Company buildings anyway? He slipped into the Manhattan facility, keeping himself invisible, making his way past the complicated network of electric locks, motion detectors, and voice-operated doors, searching through room after room, afraid of what he might see behind the next door, and the next, fighting the urge to drop all precautions and just run like hell to wherever they were keeping him.

When he found Nathan, he wondered if he'd made a mistake. A body lay on the table, half-covered by a sheet, and Peter knew that whoever it was, he was beyond saving, even with Claire's blood. He looked closer, not knowing what he was hoping for, not knowing whether he wanted to be right or wrong.

Then he saw the hands. The left thumb was scarred, the top sliced off after a car accident when Nathan had been seventeen. Peter remembered sobbing in his mother's arms at the hospital, convinced that Nathan was going to die. He remembered Nathan taking him for an ice cream sundae afterwards, letting him take off the bandage when the wound had healed.

It was Nathan. But no, it wasn't, because there was nothing left of him in this shell: he was gone, destroyed, obliterated. Peter could see what they'd done to him, and even worse, he could see why: the ways they'd tried to pinpoint the source of his propulsion during flight, the ways they'd tested his brain and nerve endings and muscle structure, splitting open his skull so its contents were easily accessible.

Peter gagged, suddenly conscious of the smell of formaldehyde and preserved flesh that filled the room. He felt the bile rising in the back of his throat, and he gripped the table, trying not to faint. Before he knew what was happening, he lost his grip on the room's electronics. A siren began to wail, the lights began to flash, and a voice came over the intercom, announcing the presence of an intruder in the building.

Peter tried to teleport, but came up against a solid wall. He knew that feeling: the Haitian. The only thing he could do was turn and run, heart pounding, muscles burning, down the fire escape and out into the street, hoping that he could get far enough away to use his powers.

Just when he thought he was safe, he heard the click of an automatic behind him. Even before she spoke, he knew who it was. And finally, finally, he knew what he had to do.

He could save Nathan from the man he would become. He could spare him the horrors that would be inflicted on his body, spare him a death that was no death but a desecration.

He was going back. And this time, things were going to be different.

* * *

_"Nathan didn't die. And now, he doesn't have to."_

* * *

Peter thought he knew the future: he thought he had it all figured out. He wanted to protect his family, save them from what they would become. But now, he's trapped in the past, and he's faced with another Nathan, another Claire, and he has to save them, too--save them from the new future he's unwittingly created.

Only now, he has no idea what that future will hold. All he can do is try to put things right. He believes he can, because he has to. Because whatever is coming, it can't be worse than what has already come to pass.


End file.
